


The Date

by birdlight



Series: The Starting Line [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Protective Bucky Barnes, Slow Burn, WinterFalcon - Freeform, fake date, sambucky - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21889732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdlight/pseuds/birdlight
Summary: Almost a date, but not really.  Sam wants Bucky to attend a reception. Bucky refuses to go until Sharon Carter agrees to tag along and of course chaos, both internal and external ensues.  Bucky is finally honest with himself about his feelings for Sam.Part Ten  of The Starting Line series. A series of one-shots exploring the relationship between Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. Slow Burn.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson
Series: The Starting Line [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1491617
Comments: 4
Kudos: 75





	The Date

The phrases on the screen made no sense. 

“Damn it, computer, you don’t have to be so literal,” Bucky muttered as he made a note in English and translated the words back to Russian and back to English and then corrected it on the computer screen. Notebooks full of similar scribblings covered the table. He had been at this since dawn and his brain was fuzzing out. He needed a break. As if in response to his wishes, Sam entered the room, a large white envelope in his hand.

“Hey,” Bucky said. He shoved his chair backward and passed his hands through his hair before giving Sam a smile. 

“Hey, Sam responded, sitting down across from him and depositing the envelope on the table. He picked up a notebook and leafed through the pages. “Doesn’t the computer translate most of this stuff?” he asked.

“Doesn’t go deep enough. Misses idioms, muddles up dialects. Somehow it turned into my responsibility to clear these files up.”

“Natasha used to do that for us,” Sam said. He looked off in the distance, his eyes looking past him for a moment. Before he could stop himself, Bucky reached out and placed his hand on Sam’s. They locked eyes for a few seconds. Sam didn’t talk about Natasha, but Bucky knew he missed her. Sam drew his hand back and deposited the envelope in front of him.

“You recall that little mission last week…”

“The one where we liberated the Senator from those kidnappers? Yeah, I seem to remember reading about that in the papers…”

“Well, he’s having a little reception to thank us, and the First Responders who took part in his rescue. He’s going to donate to a charity of our choice. You want to go?”

“I didn’t get an invitation, not that it means anything. I still scare people.”

“I expect he was thinking you would show up with me,” Sam suggested. He pulled out the invitation and placed the official stationery in front of Bucky. His eyes scanned over the gold-embossed letters giving the date, time and place, and words like ‘honor of your company’ and ‘guest’. 

“Why would he assume that?” Bucky asked. “He means you’re expected to bring a date. Take a date, it’s cool.” Bucky said the words, but didn’t mean them. Sam going with someone else wouldn’t be cool but he would be damned before he said that out loud.

“You should come,” Sam said.

“No, you can represent us, doesn’t sound like my thing.” Bucky said. He pushed the invite back at Sam and opened up a random notebook. Sam couldn’t know he was holding it upside down. He didn’t like saying no to Sam, but even though he knew this wasn’t the case, it might come across like going public with something he wasn’t ready to go public with, not yet, if ever.

“Bucky, don’t be so damn stubborn!” Sam said. “ Do I have to pull rank on you?”

“I can’t leave the cats. They’re just getting used to things.”

“Damn it, Bucky, those kittens will be fine. We’ll ask Wanda to look in on them.”

At that moment, the door opened Sharon Carter walked in, waving around her own white envelope. “Hey, did you guys get one of these?”

“Sam did, I didn’t, Bucky said, trying to sound as evasive as he could. “As I was telling Sam, I still scare people. They’re probably afraid I might go berserk right in the middle of their party.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, not after all the good you’ve been doing, besides, they probably expected you to come with Sam.”

“Told you,” Sam said, smirking at Bucky’s visible discomfort. Why were people making that assumption? 

“Not my thing, besides, they set this whole event up just so this guy can pick up some political points,” Bucky said. He threw down the notebook and picked up another.

“Everyone knows what he’s doing,” Sharon said. “But the survivors of human trafficking won’t care where the money comes from, which is where I want my contribution to go. Look,” she said, taking a seat. “Why don’t we all three go together? I don’t have anyone I want to ask, we’ll make a party of it, if it’s okay with you Sam?” she asked, hesitation in her voice. “I don’t want to overstep anything.”

“You’re not overstepping a damn thing. Bucky should go, it would seem almost disrespectful if he didn’t. The guy seems really grateful and he just wants to say thank you,” Sam said. “And it’s about charity, so yeah, if you don’t have anybody to go with, sounds like a plan. How about it Bucky?”

Sharon’s presence as a buffer lessened his concern about showing up with Sam.

“Okay, I’m outnumbered. You win. I’ll go.” He tossed the notebook back on the table.

“Good,” Sam said. “That’s all I wanted.”

The suit fit better than he thought it would. Sharon insisted on it being tailored, and had taken pains to remind him to have his hair trimmed, which he had tied back. He wore black gloves, like he always did. Sharon wore a loose flowing light blue dress with silver jewelry. 

“Where is Sam?” Bucky asked, irritated. “This was his idea, the least he can do is to be on time.”

“He’s on his way,” Sharon said, greeting a woman who passed by who seemed to know her. A slight nudge of her elbow in his side meant he should smile, which he did and to his surprise, the woman smiled back before entering the main room.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She asked.

“That was just one person,” Bucky said. A movement to the side, and there was Sam, looking good, his suit of deep black velvet. 

“Don’t you look pretty!” He said greeting Sharon. He gave Bucky a long stare. Bucky half expected him to let loose with some of his favorite snark. “You clean up nice,” he said. That was tame. 

“So do you,” Bucky said. Truth was, he looked fantastic. Show stopping good but before he could say anything else, Sharon positioned herself in the middle of them.

“Shall we go in?” She asked taking an arm of both of them. 

To Bucky’s relief, the place and the people weren’t as over the top as he feared., They fit right in. It was just a small step up from a run-of-the-mill cocktail party. People greeted Sam, of course they would. He had more than proven his worth as the New Captain America. They exchanged greetings with Sharon and to his surprise, spoke to him as well, some of the law enforcement officers who had worked on the job with him shook his hand. They all looked him in the eyes, and somewhere deep inside him, the old Bucky came back out, smiling and making passable small talk.

“See, I told you this wouldn’t be so bad,” Sharon said. “If you’ll excuse me, there're some friends from my CIA days that I haven’t seen for a while. You two boys... mingle.” Part of Bucky wanted to grab her hand and keep her there between him and Sam but she was gone, off to the other side of the room where she greeted a group of women. Exclamations of surprise and hugging ensued. Bucky wondered if she had left them alone on purpose.

Senator Trimble appeared out of nowhere, followed by his wife and entourage. “I want to thank you for coming,” he said. He shook both their hands. “I can’t tell you the relief I experienced when the two of you burst through that door. It looked effortless.”

“Thank you, but it was a team effort,” Sam said modestly. Another elbow poke.

“I’m glad we could help, and things turned out as well as they did,” Bucky said. It sounded lame, but the Senator smiled at his words.

“We’re so grateful to have him back,” Mrs. Trimble said.

Cameras flashed from out of nowhere, catching Bucky off guard triggering his automatic defensive responses but he felt a tight grip on his forearm. Sam knew, and this was his way of keeping him calm. The Senator thanked them again and moved on.

“You did okay,” Sam said, releasing him. “And I know that was close. I didn’t know there were going to be reporters here.”

“I said this was one way to score political points,” Bucky whispered back. “Now what?”

“Mr. Wilson, Captain America, I wonder if you’d say a few words about the experience?” A fresh-faced young man appeared at his side, holding a digital recorder. He must have been hiding under the table behind them. 

“There’s not much to say,” Sam said. “They called us in to help, but the police and other agencies did most of the hard work, fixing a location on the senator. We were just one link in a long chain of professionals who worked hard to secure the Senator’s safety.”

“And you?” The man turned to Bucky.

“What he said,” Bucky replied. He realized that might have sounded rude, so he gave the young man a smile. 

“Do you think you and I could arrange an interview? I think it would interest our readers.”

“I think everyone knows my story,” Bucky said, still doing his best to work a disarming smile. A woman walked up to Sam and began speaking to him in low tones and led him away to another table filled with hors d’oeuvres. 

“We know what happened to you, but we don’t know the real you, the internal journey.”

At the moment Bucky couldn’t describe his internal journey. The woman was striking. Wide eyes, a prominent smile and warm brown skin. She wore a white dress, and gold jewelry. Bucky didn’t like the way she was looking at Sam, and even though Sam responded to her the same way, he did everyone else, here something tugged at Bucky’s insides when he laughed at something she said. He didn’t recognize the emotion.

“Maybe we can work something out,” Bucky said. He didn’t mean it, he was just using the young man as a cover. “What’s your name?”

“John Markov,” the young man replied.

“That’s Russian,” Bucky said without thinking. 

“Yes, it is, but my family has been here for a long time. We’re all American now,” John said. He positioned himself in front of Bucky, blocking his view of Sam and the woman. Bucky turned to pick up a drink from the table behind them, which gave him a reason to shift his position so he could keep Sam in his line of sight. To his annoyance, the journalist shifted as well and kept peppering him with questions. He took a deliberate step to the side, for a moment noted something about the woman’s dress. Flowing, in contrast to the tighter styles some other women were wearing. Like Sharon’s. She dressed that way because she sometimes wore a thigh holster…

“So we can set up a time…?”

“Sure, why not?” Bucky said, taking a drink. 

Then he saw it. Her hand reaching down, a flip of the dress…a flash of steel.

And he was there, grabbing her hand right as the gun went off into the ceiling the bullet hitting a light. Bucky twisted her wrist and she cried out in pain, but it caused the weapon to drop onto the floor, and a man he knew to be a police officer stood over it, not allowing anyone else near it.

“How stupid are you?” Bucky asked letting her go. The beautiful woman turned ugly as she looked daggers at him and tried to hit him but the pain stopped her. He had probably broken her wrist. “In this room...full of… police officers? And us? Oh, and grab that guy too…” he said, pointing toward the fake reporter trying to inch his way out of the room. The police grabbed him and slammed against the wall.

“How?” was all she asked. “How?”

“I’m not giving away my secrets.” Bucky said. “And I would advise you, and whoever you work for, not to try this again.” He set his jaws and eyes to flip into his Winter Soldier mode. The woman shuddered as the police led her away.

He knew he was standing in the center of the room, with everyone looking at him. Somewhere, someone burst into applause, and someone shouted ‘Bravo!” making him uncomfortable. Sam came over and put his arm around his shoulders. “This,’ he said, addressing the crowd. “Is why I keep him around!” 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Bucky mumbled. “I have to get out of here.”

Bucky felt Sam’s hand on his shoulder tightened. “Getting to be too much for you?” he asked, his voice low. Bucky said nothing, but nodded in return, doing his best to look away from the cameras. 

The rest of it was a blur. Giving a brief statement to the arresting officer, mumbling something about Markov’s insistent behavior that set off alarms that made him more determined to keep Sam in his sight, being shuttled outside to a private entrance, shielded from the few reporters who found them, Sam and Sharon doing their best to fend then off, being driven away by someone on the Senator’s staff. The news was full of the attempt; they were members of the group who kidnapped the Senator and were angry at Captain America for foiling their plans. One pundit said that this action convinced him now more than ever, that Bucky Barnes had well and truly reformed and that all those stories about brainwashing were true. 

Throughout the aftermath, one thought stayed on repeat in Bucky’s mind. _I almost lost him._

The kittens were a little afraid of the grass at first but in no time at all; they were running through the flowers chasing butterflies and fighting with each other. The enclosed courtyard was the perfect place for them to get some outdoor time and keep them safe from traffic and the predators that lurked in the forest on the edge of the compound. 

He heard him approach and sit by him on the bench, but kept his eyes focused on Gem and Thomasina. 

“Glad to see you outside in the sunshine, and not shut away in your room,” Sam said. He picked up a stick and threw it at the kittens. They both jumped back, startled, then promptly attacked it. He chucked at their antics. “So, everything finally calm down? Inside I mean?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Bucky replied. 

“So how did you know? I mean it, how did you know to monitor her?” Sam asked. “Because I want to learn that technique.”

“Training, learning to suspect everybody. How that kid kept trying to block my view of you sent up a red flag.” Bucky said. It was the truth but he left out one small detail. _I couldn’t take my eyes off of you because I was jealous. I didn’t realize it until it was all over._

“I’m glad it worked. Thank you,” Sam said. “I guess that makes us even...again. Although I’m not keeping score.”

“Me neither,” Bucky said. “And I somehow messed up the party, just like I said I would.”

Sam threw back his head and laughed, startling the kittens. “But what would have happened if you hadn’t gone with us? I was right to drag you along. Next time, no arguments, no debates, you’re going. I’m never leaving you behind!”

“I learned my lesson,” Bucky said.“Where you go I go.” He turned his attention back toward his cats, and a sudden feeling euphoria exploded inside his chest. It was time to be honest with himself. A weird high, another unexplained emotion but this time he knew exactly what it was.

_I’m never letting you out of my sight. I love you._


End file.
